Spinnin’ Wheel, Got To Go ‘Round

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THE WHEEL OF TIME – Season 1 – Episodes 1 through 3 – SPOILERS

Rosamund Pike and Daniel Henney

Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike) and her warder Lan Mondragoran (Daniel Henney)

More ‘Sword and Science‘ than ‘Sword and Sorcery‘; THE WHEEL OF TIME is an engaging, complex, and coherent fantasy world. Fans of the books seem generally displeased with the series’ divergence from the original, but fans of any book are almost never happy with the film or TV show made from it. Not having read the fourteen novels (but having read quite a lot about them) the fidelity of the show to the original material is not (for me) something of concern. But some worrisome things were pointed out in an article by Allison Flood in The Guardian titled: “Too much bosom: why The Wheel of Time is far from ‘great for women’“, which said (about the books): “…women are always thinking about how they look and what they’re wearing — or frequently what they’re not wearing…As one of the main characters puts it: ‘If the world is ending, a woman would want time to fix her hair.'” Flood cites this short passage: “He sounded like a bumblebee the size of a cat instead of a mastiff.” as one example (among others) of the novels’ questionable prose.
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A Guardian Will Come From The North

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NIGHT RAIDERS – a film by Danis Goulet – SPOILERS

Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) takes aim at a bird with the idea of turning it into food. She will decide to listen to it instead.

Beyond it’s timely political message, NIGHT RAIDERS is an excellent bit of science fiction that vividly illustrates the suggestion that technology may be evolving into a form that is more compatible with the natural world.

The very first scene goes a long way toward defining the two main characters. In it, Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) is about to use a slingshot to turn a bird into her dinner but decides not to and instead whispers something to it in Cree. Her mother Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) asks her “Why don’t you kill it?” and she responds “I was listening to it.” Her mother is a little confused at this and says, to no one in particular, “It won’t get us fed.” Continue reading →

What the Cast of Killjoys is Doing Now (Pt.2)

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Nora McLellan, Kimberly-Sue Murray, Sarah Power, Lina Roessler, Morgan Kelly, Alanna Bale

Prince Amponsah and Greta Onieogou

Prince Amponsah and Greta Onieogou in “Healing Hands” (Episode 1.4 of FRANKIE DRAKE MYSTERIES)

Prince Amponsah (Havigan in “A Skinner, Darkly“) will be August, a member of The Traveling Symphony and one of Kirsten’s oldest friends, in the upcoming science fiction miniseries STATION ELEVEN. The ten-episode series is based on the 2014 novel by Emily St.John Mandel about a fictional catastrophic swine flu epidemic (the Georgian Flu). MacKenzie Davis stars as Kristen, a member of a traveling Shakespearean theatre troupe that travels through the the Great Lakes area performing in the post-collapse settlements there. As a child actor, Kristen witnessed the onstage death of actor Arthur Leander (played by Gael Garcia Bernal), which marked the beginning of the plague. Kristen has preserved a copy of a pre-apocalypse comic book called Station Eleven (featuring Doctor Eleven and his space station), hence the title of the book and series. Showrunner Patrick Sommerville told Emma Dibdin of Towne & Country that fans of the book should prepare themselves for some major changes. “The spirit of that book to me was always about what’s gentle and human inside of us before and after,” he said, “and how do we get back to the people that we love? And how is that hard? Emily’s voice as a novelist is impressive for what it does to knit things together. We needed to make our stories a little different to get that back.” Directed by Hiro Murai, STATION ELEVEN will premiere on HBO Max on 16 December. YouTube has a trailer. Continue reading →